


A Mess (Happy for You)

by EarthsickWithoutYou



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Biting, Blood Kink, Enemies to Lovers, Jealous Will Graham, Longing, M/M, Minor Character Death, Obsessive Behavior, Possessive Behavior, Rough Sex, Scar Worship, Scratching, Set in early Season 3, Smut, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:35:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28388643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EarthsickWithoutYou/pseuds/EarthsickWithoutYou
Summary: After the bloody disaster of "Mizumono," Will follows Hannibal to Florence, only to discover that his enemy is carrying on an affair with Anthony Dimmond.  Little does Will know that Hannibal has Anthony pretending to be Will, as this is the young poet's only value to him.  When Hannibal and Will finally come face to face, it's with a shocking confrontation of the devastating love between them.
Relationships: Anthony Dimmond/Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 22
Kudos: 189





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In this version of events, Hannibal used another victim, rather than Anthony, to create his "valentine on a broken man" for Will.

When Will sailed to Europe to find Hannibal, he could not have told anyone if he was doing it to kill him or kiss him. So he found it much easier not to ask himself that question, even if Abigail brought it up quite often.

Jack had almost mentioned it outright, for God’s sake, and…

_Because he was my friend and I wanted him to leave. And because I wanted to run away with him._

It didn’t have to be more complicated than that, Will reasoned, letting the ocean breeze cool his skin and the salted sea mist kiss his flushed cheeks. He adjusted the sail and smiled over at Abigail, who was lounging on the deck, one arm crossed over her knee, the book on her lap getting slightly damp at the corners. 

“That book’s going to get soaked,” Will called to her.

She laughed brightly, pausing with her finger between two pages, marking her place. “The pages will always be slightly wilted just here and smell of the sea. It’s a memory. I’ll always remember our trip.”

“Me, too,” Will grinned, letting himself abide for now in the fantasy she was really here, alive and well. He couldn’t bear to think of her as a corpse, slowly consumed by time and retaken by the earth. She belonged to herself, to him and Hannibal, and they were supposed to be a family…

Until Will had ruined it all with stupid indecision and disloyalty. Or until Hannibal ruined it all with his monstrous rage at Will’s betrayal. When hearts were this broken, it was just too hard to tell who was guilty, too hard to remember innocence.

He could not repress the memory of Hannibal’s face when he leaned down to whisper to him in the kitchen, as Will convulsed with his agonizing wound, that tear sliding down a face he once conveniently assured himself was too godlike to give into mere human despair. Hannibal’s voice, still rumbling in his ears over the sea spray and rocking of the boat against the waves, every reason he should turn around and go back home. _You can make it all go away._ But Hannibal had assumed wrongly; Will did not want to run away from the beautiful, painful horror of their love. For he was certain by now it was love, and that was the only thing he had left to hold onto, that Hannibal had not taken away from him in cruelty, twisted manipulation or vengeance. 

Will was in the unique position of loving and hating Hannibal to such extremes that being without him every day felt like living without a heartbeat, caught between life and death.

His eyes wandered from Abigail’s happy face back out to the rolling grey-blue waves. It would only be another few days before they reached Italy. He dreamed of the Norman Chapel every night, with his body curled up in the small bed down below deck. The ocean held and rocked him in its deep, dark cradle, and he dreamed of Hannibal, a better world they could make together, one that contained forgiveness. Honesty, even. Yet, he didn’t know if he had the nerve, even now. His fingers routinely wandered under his heavy sweaters to stroke the bold outline of the scar on his belly, and when he was alone, when Abigail was sleeping, he would fondle it, wondering exactly what Hannibal had meant by digging that blade into him and leaving his mark on Will forever. The first breaking of his skin and muscle and the shocking overflow of his blood at Hannibal’s hand had been a matter of excruciating ecstasy to Will; he knew what it had done to him. He was proud of his scar, touched it like treasure, proof Hannibal cared. 

But what if he was wrong and Hannibal had ceased to love him when he learned of Will’s betrayal, his attempt to confine him to a prison cell in lieu of running away together?

Was this scar an angry accusation, a heartbroken plea, or both? Or, was it meaningless, because Hannibal was nothing more than a monster? When he thought of how Hannibal had hugged him, tight and desperate, as the blood flowed horrifically from his wound and stained them both forever, Will found it hard to believe Hannibal could help loving him, even when they were each at their worst. And yet...he might be blinded by insane devotion, love for a cannibalistic serial killer...how had this happened to him?

Will almost didn’t care about the frightening possibilities of any of these questions; he was that far gone. He knew nothing except that he had to see Hannibal. Maybe then it would all make sense.

***

“When will you be satisfied?” Abigail asked, concerned. 

They sat on a bench in the courtyard outside a severely beautiful Italian university where ‘Roman Fell’ was guest-lecturing that afternoon. From their vantage point behind several large, leafy trees they were mostly concealed to anyone who might emerge from the door across the way. That was the door through which they had watched Hannibal disappear a few hours ago, and then resigned themselves to wandering around the campus, pondering listlessly of the beauty around them. This university, with its cheerful students unspooling from lecture to lecture, bustling around the fine velvety lawn, was just as stunning in its noble, antique visage as the rest of the city.

Will understood why Hannibal loved this place so dearly. Ruled over by a looming cathedral with a regal golden dome, Florence was incomparably alive with art and history. Strolling through magnificent piazzas and the banks of the river Arno, Will soon learned there was almost no place to look which had not been marked by the great artists of the Renaissance. He was walking streets lined with the scar tissue of the past, and here his heart felt almost at home, if never lonelier, so close to Hannibal but unable to speak, to hear his voice or touch him, experience his touch like the sweet torture of the sharpest blade, a pain that had him addicted.

“What do you mean?” Will asked, standing, tucking his hands into his jacket pockets, then circling a tree, as if to further flee the question. 

A pity that he didn’t really have anywhere else to go at the moment; Hannibal would be back soon, and he wasn’t going to miss it. These fleeting glimpses were the only thing he had to sustain the breath in his lungs, sadly enough. He had forgotten the feeling of being disappointed in himself for the fact.

“I _mean_ you’ve gone everywhere and tried everything to connect with him,” Abigail shrugged, baffled but not unkind in the least. “We went to the Norman Chapel and found his valentine, you told him you forgave him, but he wouldn’t come to you. That could have been the end of it.”

Will gripped the firm bark of the trunk, almost swinging from it rather childishly as he rounded the tree once again to come face to face with his surrogate daughter. Abigail’s vivid blue eyes met him full-on, soft but fearless. She had on that same ivory crepe blouse she always seemed to wear lately, smart black jacket, her throat bare to proudly show off her scar, and her auburn hair fell silky around her shoulders. He tried not to linger on the overly repetitive familiarity of such details. 

“Why are you playing devil’s advocate?” He asked her in amused confusion. “You want to go back to him, too, you’ve told me so outright.”

“Playing hide and seek is not going to him,” Abigail said bluntly. “You can’t dart through his shadows forever, Will; eventually you’ll have to face him. I mean, what more do you need to know about him? We even went all the way to Lithuania…”

“Yes, and what we found there did not exactly magnify my enthusiasm to face him. If there’s a difference between the way Hannibal treats the rest of his toys and the way he treats me, I’m not seeing it. Look at what he did to Chiyoh, leaving her alone with the ghosts of his past, and still she remains loyal. I think that hits too close to home for me.”

“Well, look at what she did to you, Will. You look like you fell off a train, because you did.” Abigail smirked, her own face pristine and pretty as ever. “Chiyoh is no toy, no pawn. She made her own choices. You need to stop looking for excuses to keep yourself hidden from Hannibal. Don’t you think he misses you as much as you miss him?”

“I don’t know,” Will said, despondent. “The way he danced with Bedelia the other night…the goddamned outfits, the theatrical elegance and decadent fairy tale perfection of it all, the _wedding rings._ ” 

He clutched his hands into tight fists, seething at the memory of Hannibal gracefully dancing the night away with Bedelia in his arms like his beautiful queen. As if Hannibal didn’t remember Will at all.

“But you said he looked sad,” Abigail objected.

“He...did.” At the admission, Will allowed himself the pleasant, if awful acknowledgement that he could see right through Hannibal’s fake smiles. He had not really been joyous and free on the evening of the ball; underneath his winsome social graces and impeccable dancing, Hannibal was miserable, dying inside. He was still in the kitchen with Will. 

Will’s jealousy and self-doubt battled so harshly with his perception that Hannibal did care for him that he could barely make any kind of decision about what to do. He kept telling himself he would keep watching, day by day, and eventually he would know; the answer would come to him.

Just then, Hannibal finally emerged from the lecture hall, chatting merrily with a tall, curly-haired man with an indeterminate beard, barely more than stubble. The stranger wore a flannel shirt with blue jeans and plain brown boots, like the kind Will usually wore back in Wolf Trap. Moreover, he was leaning on Hannibal’s arm with obnoxious familiarity, softly laughing at everything the killer said.

Hannibal walked, arm and arm with this horrible, handsome younger man who looked more than a little like Will, right down to the American accent that caught Will’s ears when they passed him by obliviously. They were so wrapped up in each other that Will wasn’t surprised Hannibal never even glanced towards his barely sufficient hiding place. Hannibal brushed a kiss to the young man’s cheek, causing the stranger to blush and giggle, “ _Hannibal…_ ”

And that was all Will got to hear, because after that they had walked out of earshot and he was too distraught to follow them. His heart was a wreck, a catastrophic implosion of pain and disappointment and shattered dreams it had taken him months to glue back together in the first place. If Hannibal had truly fallen in love with someone new, the part of Will that loved the killer should be _happy_ for him, right? Real love meant letting go when it was time. If he wasn’t going to be with Hannibal or arrest him, didn’t Hannibal have a right to his own happiness? Yet Will would deny him that, vehemently, if the cannibal was truly going looking for that joy in the arms of a stranger.

“So he has a type,” he said bitterly, his eyes flashing with so much anger and hurt that Abigail flinched.

“He’s probably about to go kill that guy, you know,” Abigail remarked. “I’m sure there’s nothing deeper going on.”

“I beg to differ, Abigail, because unlike the night he danced with Bedelia Du Maurier, just now Hannibal looked genuinely happy. Right now, he doesn’t have a care in the world.”

“Will, I’m sure you’re wrong...Hannibal loves you, loves _us._ He wanted us to be a family, and it would have been perfect.”

“Oh, come off it, you’d never say that, Abigail,” Will accused miserably, knowing the consequences.

“No, I wouldn’t,” she confessed, as the wound on her neck reopened, spurting rich red blood down her body, “But you would.”

Abigail vanished. It had taken so long to get her back after the first time, Will hadn’t been sure he would see her again. And now he thought she was probably gone for good.

He was tormenting himself for no good reason yet again, but there was no way to hold back from this. 

Will followed Hannibal and the stranger down the street, then watched with a smoldering glare of fast-growing hatred as they disappeared into the killer’s elegant apartment.

***

Things with Anthony Dimmond had begun on such a promising note that Hannibal thought it would take longer for the inevitable consequence of their acquaintance to come to pass. A shame, he decided as he lay in bed a few hours after they had returned to the apartment, a blood-stained knife clutched in his hand, Anthony bleeding out on the bed beside him. The young British poet lay naked on his back with his big blue eyes wide open in sustained shock. Really, he was a charming man who deserved better than such an indecent and rage-driven end, but Anthony had walked right into the jaws of danger, pleased by the feeling of peril, and he had to have guessed this was one potential result of his wild gambit.

After meeting Anthony at a party one night, the young man had immediately become enamored with him, lustfully professing his free intention to do absolutely anything it took to please Hannibal. As such, Hannibal had been unable to resist the temptation to have the boy pretend to be Will Graham, right down to the last detail. How could he have held back from such a beautiful circumstance of resemblance? All it required was the right clothing, a simple ruffling of his curls, an American accent and some detailed descriptions of Will’s personality to make the effect absolutely uncanny. 

He took Anthony on extravagant tours of Florence, sparing no expense in their evenings of art, culture, opera and long, insatiable hours of sex. They ate in the finest restaurants and indulged their most wicked sensual appetites, and it was _almost_ a satisfying enough self-deception to keep Hannibal mildly content. Mildly content meant not losing his mind and killing half the city in wrathful heartbreak, as Bedelia had intimated on the one occasion she had the nerve to introduce the subject of his fling with Anthony. She approved it as a coping mechanism, Hannibal assumed mainly because it gave him someone else to focus his intense energy and need for attention, affection and satisfaction upon. Bedelia had proven a disappointment with her icy attitude, plus her lack of stomach for the grotesque. Hannibal’s appetites would not be contained; he must have the proper stimulation, or he would indeed paint Florence red.

Being without Will, knowing he had done things that might keep them parted forever more, it was quite enough to make him more savage than ever. After their near-meeting in the chapel, with Will’s soft words of forgiveness, Hannibal lacked the nerve to face him head-on. Now the chance had been dwindled and he had no idea when he might be so unbelievably lucky, so blessed by a usually cruel God, as to see his precious Will again. Until then, he must keep himself entertained and reasonably stable.

Today had allowed for the experiment of another of Hannibal’s fantasies: that he would look up during one of his intellectual lectures on ancient art to see Will sitting among his audience, enraptured by the sight of Hannibal, hanging on his every word. Anthony had carried the performance off with excellent zeal, really looking the part of Will with his shy smile and the pink flush in his cheeks, the way he bit his lip when their eyes met. He was too tall, and a few features didn’t match up with Will’s, in a way that made Hannibal almost snap his neck at the most unpredictable moments, anytime he couldn’t keep the fantasy up completely. The pain came back in, and Hannibal wanted someone to suffer for it.

Still, Hannibal managed to hold off, and enjoyed a lovely lunch back at the apartment with Anthony, panzanella followed by bistecca alla fiorentine. “Will” complimented him with a flirtatious, irresistible shy boy charm on his cookery, so that Hannibal could barely manage to clear the dishes away before taking his beloved into the bedroom.

Again, all seemed to be going to the usual plan. “Will” writhed and moaned beneath him with exquisite obedience, giving his lovely body up to every one of Hannibal’s most wicked whims. They both came, murmuring words of naughty flirtation as they lay with their limbs lazily tangled in the sumptuous king bed, soft afternoon sunshine filtering in through the gauzy curtains.

He hummed in satisfaction, threading his fingers through his sweetheart’s hair as the younger man lay nestled against his chest. Then his lover made his first and last grave error in the whole of their endeavors. “I love you, Hannibal,” Anthony sighed, and Hannibal knew _Anthony_ didn’t love him, not that he would have cared. Anthony was still trying to play Will Graham, and he believed that if he said these three all-important words, it would make Hannibal happy.

Before Anthony could understand what was happening, Hannibal had pushed him away, lunged from the bed to grab the closest knife, then stabbed him brutally all over; he slit his throat, he plunged the blade deep into his gut; he straddled Anthony and said with miserable certainty and hateful accusation, “Will would _never_ say that.” Then he brought the knife down even more ruthlessly.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _"I'm free as a bird when I'm flying in your cage"_ \-- Rita Ora
> 
>  _"Fuck, fuck, fuck some sense into me"_ \-- Tove Lo

Will waited outside Hannibal’s lovely, almost regal apartment until the rain started washing his tears away. He rustled back to full consciousness of his circumstances, out of the darkness in his oblivion of grief and disappointment. It was like he had a headful of bats sometimes, unable to register anything but bleak adoration for a cruel devil.

He returned to his pathetic, bare rented room with its twin bed, a lair of punishment he had devised to make himself regret coming here. It was so hard to forget that he was surrounded by beauty; he had to embrace the ugliness wherever he could find it, or he’d be stuck in hypnotized limbo forever.

Now that he had seen, all too clearly, that Hannibal was moving on, it was time for Will to do the same. He obviously had quite a few options, although none of them were savory. The most dangerous, but tempting one was to kill Hannibal on sight on his very next opportunity. His whole body felt taken over by a hot shock of anger to see how easy it was for Hannibal to replace him with any pretty little distraction, first Bedelia and now this young man with an uncanny resemblance to Will. Maybe Will had only been one of many potential lovers courted by the Ripper, because the killer simply had a weakness for a certain type of face, porcelain, deceptively delicate, sweet in all the most wicked ways. 

Will could just go home, back to his little house and the dogs he missed so dearly. But he’d be returning to Jack’s barely-concealed suspicion and all the old, sore burdens of a job he hated, a life painfully boring without his...Hannibal.

Without his love, without his tormenter, his _everything._ Hannibal had broken him to a place of impossibility, a void that existed for the Ripper to fill; no one and nothing else would do.

Hannibal, who only faded into shadows when Will offered forgiveness, Hannibal who didn’t care about Will at all anymore, who had left him in a puddle of his own blood on the kitchen floor like a soon-to-be-forgotten stain of regret. 

He tasted blood on his tongue now, with a surge of devastating vengeance. If he removed Hannibal, cut him out of the world like a festering tumor, he could still save himself.

***

Hannibal returned to his apartment the next evening in a foul mood. Disposing of Anthony’s body had occasioned him an uncomfortable dash of melancholy, almost a regret. There would be no one now for him to play out his decadent, greedy fantasies of love with Will Graham; he had destroyed his very eager partner in the game, and there was something too that hurt in seeing a face so much like Will’s, drained of vitality and dreams, rendered nothing but blank inconsideration to the world.

On his way into the building, he was surprised to encounter Bedelia, strolling out into the night with her designer suitcase on wheels dragged behind her.

He paused, holding the door open for her with gentlemanly comportment, tilting his head in half-interested analysis of her ever-cool veneer and the deep fear hiding beneath. 

“Bedelia. I had not anticipated a sudden departure on your part. Are you running away from me?”

She paid no attention to the light humor in his tone, nor the none-too-subtle threat. Bedelia was aware Hannibal considered her marked as a future victim, a tattoo on her soul from which there was no escape, wherever she might flee. 

Instead, she merely shivered, pulled her white cloak more snugly around narrow shoulders, shook out her flaxon hair as if trying to dispel a nightmare. 

“It’s not you I’m running from, Hannibal. He’s waiting for you upstairs; I think you had better go to him now.”

There was only one person who could have frightened her even more substantially than Hannibal himself; only one person who could make Hannibal content to toss Bedelia away like another of his passably entertaining toys. In fact, he genuinely cared for her, but no one mattered by comparison, _no one_ could hold his attention for a second, if it was really true. 

If _he_ was really here, had come to Hannibal of his own volition, a free bird flying back into his cage.

Hannibal’s heart skipped a beat. “Goodbye, Bedelia,” he said almost as an afterthought while she slipped from him into the darkness and the mystery, murmuring the same back to him, “Goodbye, Hannibal,” forcing herself to walk slowly and normally although she must be screaming inside with the urge to break into a run.

***

Will felt Hannibal come in, as much as he heard the soft sound of the door pushed open, the sense of Hannibal pressing himself flat to the wall, inhaling the sight and scent of Will’s presence, too overwhelmed to approach directly at first, a cat with hackles raised.

He sat with his back to Hannibal in one of the two antique armchairs situated before a pleasantly warm, crackling fireplace. A glass of dark red wine dangled from Will’s listless fingers and he watched a piece of wood surrendering to flame with a last gasp and spark.

“Will,” Hannibal said breathlessly. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

It was only the back of Will’s head with curls neatly combed and slicked, his black-on-black formal attire and the graceful way he lounged, a freshly coined predator, a magnet to a helpless prey. Hannibal’s state of almost paralyzed excitement still wasn’t enough to calm Will’s raging temper, only providing a twinge of satisfaction as the flames began consuming another slab of timber. His hunger, when it came to Hannibal, might be unquenchable; no joy or suffering could fill him up and relieve his savage appetite.

He stood, set his wine down and languorously stalked over to Hannibal, finding him sealed in terrified bliss to the great dark doors, big strong hands planted on the wood, eyes wide and searching. The Ripper’s expression was casual, but his eyes were desperate.

“Are you quite well, Doctor?” Will asked, “Looks like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“I was concerned it would be like this whenever I had the chance to be so near you again,” Hannibal murmured, as if fascinated by his own responses, so unlike his usually impenetrably above-it-all lifestyle. “Your effect on me has grown impossible to control, a sort of besotted obsession such as I’ve never felt. You, my Will. So stunning. You look different.”

“What do I look like, then?”

“Like yourself,” Hannibal elaborated, his gaze enough to swallow Will whole. If anything, the bruises and cuts from Chiyoh's train shove only increased Hannibal's admiring assessment. “Lean, supple, primed for the attack. Debonair, smooth, and powerful.”

“Happy to see me?” Will teased, hoping it hurt like the tease of having his face gently cupped and stroked right before the blade sank deep in his belly. “I wasn’t sure you would be. Where’s your...boyfriend, your partner, your lover? Won’t I be in the way of the new life you’ve established here, Dr. Lecter?”

He hovered just outside of Hannibal’s personal space, his words falling into the rush of Hannibal’s startled breath at his assumptions.

“There is only one man who fulfills my exceedingly high qualifications enough for me to ever wish to bestow those words upon him,” Hannibal explained, staring at Will’s lips, “For him, I would say boyfriend, partner, lover...even husband. For him, I would say ‘soulmate,’ but to no other.”

“How devoted you are,” Will mocked, disbelieving, despite the ragged throttle which Hannibal’s professions caused in his wounded heart. “Should I just call him your boytoy, then?”

“How did you even know about my trysts with Anthony Dimmond?” Hannibal inquired, a soft smile tweaking his lips that showed pleasure at Will’s obvious jealousy, his territorial anger.

“Anthony Dimmond,” Will repeated, tucking hands into his trousers’ pockets and circling the room in anguished disdain. “I’d like to rip him open and splash the streets with his entrails. The way you let him _touch_ you--”

“How did you know?” Hannibal asked, astonished by Will’s openness on the subject, cut open himself by the sudden certainty of reciprocation.

“I watched the two of you yesterday afternoon,” Will fumed, glaring at him with eyes like sharp sapphire glass. “Surprised you didn’t even notice me, didn’t _smell_ me, so close, but you were _distracted._ ”

“I had him wearing your aftershave,” Hannibal clarified, going to Will and placing a gentle hand on his arm to stop his pacing. “I wouldn’t have noticed a repetition of the same scent. I had him pretending to be you. I dressed him like you, called him by your name, did everything I could to immerse myself in the dream of finally having you all for myself, my own.”

“How dare you appropriate the emotion between us and assign it to some facsimile?” Will demanded. “Am I nothing to you but a set of recognizable features, a pair of glasses, a flannel and jeans, fishing boots and a certain look of horrified infatuation?”

“Am I nothing to _you_ but a punching bag, a convenient place to lay all of your own guilts, as if it is my fault you had my heart in the palm of your hands and threw it to the wolves, hmm?” Hannibal’s temper burst like a ripe red balloon and Will stared at him, the tables twisted abruptly around.

It was Will’s turn to stare aghast. Hannibal had raised his voice. He was sweltering, shaking with anger and adoration, pointing a finger at Will, which everyone knew was _rude._

“How dare _you_ come here, upset with me for finding some desperate, pathetic way to feel close to you again? No one forced you to become my dearest friend and confidant, to use that unheard-of intimacy to betray me and uproot my entire existence!” Hannibal’s hair slid down over his brow as Will lingered in the middle of the room, shot through with the difficult, truthful accusations.

“Do you have any idea how prideful I am? How cold, how locked out to all vulnerability, how hard I worked to make myself into that man?” Hannibal raged at him, put his hand on a small wooden table by the door and thrust it hard to the floor with a loud crash. This seemed to provide a measure of relief, so he added venomously, “You smashed me to bits, and then you have the audacity to cross the ocean simply to offer insincere forgiveness, then continue keeping yourself from me, sealed up in a new armor you have crafted out of an unearned jealousy.”

“Hannibal,” Will interrupted feebly.

“Oh, it’s Hannibal, now, is it? None of your mocking, cruel ‘Dr. Lecters,’ no more of your sweet little seductive tricks? You must have known I understood how likely it was that you were playing a long-game to entrap me, still I chose to trust you above everything. I gave it all to you, and you didn’t care.”

Hannibal knocked a marble bust to the floor and Will flinched as it shattered into chalky fragments. 

“I cared,” Will argued, his own disgust at Hannibal’s actions in Baltimore returning to overcome his shock at Hannibal’s loss of temper. “I cared for you, deeply. I wanted...but you wouldn’t let me explain. And you took Abigail away, you slit her throat as if she meant nothing, just a way to hurt me. She was beautiful and precious, she was our daughter and you _killed_ her because that seemed easier to you than hearing me out!”

He ran to Hannibal, clutched his shirt in his fist and glared, “Don’t talk to me as if I’m the only one who’s been betrayed, who’s suffered for our bond.”

“Our _bond_?” Hannibal shoved Will’s hand off of him and roughly batted at his own tear-streaked cheek. “ _I love you_. Damn you! You’d say any other word in the world to avoid loving me. Our bond, your _feelings._ If you felt for me as I ache and crave and suffer for you -- if you felt even a drop of this, you would _understand._ ”

“Understand _what_?” Will almost spat, hands on his hips, heaving breaths of barely contained aggression he couldn’t separate out into wrath, grief, and obsessive desire.

“Do you think me impervious to regret? Do you think I regarded Abigail as disposable, after all I did to extricate her from the problems of her life so that the three of us could be together? Is it your assumption that I took any pleasure from punishing you, or that it was easy for me to kill her? In short, Will, are you a complete fool, so blinded by your refusal to embrace your true desires that you must villainize me at every turn?”

“You used to like being the villain,” Will said, a bit weakly. 

He ran a hand over his own jaw, awake to new sensations at Hannibal’s tirade. Still he was angry, hurt, torn at the seams, but in some strange way it felt good to talk this out, felt even better to see how he had brought Hannibal down to the mortal realm, where a temper tantrum, raised voices and tirades were altogether possible.

“Not with you, Will.” Hannibal shook his head, as if disappointed that Will didn’t seem to understand anything.

“Your version of love is too cruel, Hannibal, it’s _mean._ ” Will’s chin wobbled and tears of his own spilled from his eyes as he lifted his shirt. “No one can make a mistake and be forgiven. Your punishment is beyond what God or the devil would find just, it’s too _horrible._ You couldn’t say you loved me, you had to carve it into my flesh?”

Hannibal’s expression shifted from anguished accusation to the purest awe as Will showed him the dark imprint of a smiling scar on his smooth, firm stomach. “Yes,” he whispered, “I did.”

“What is it?” Will snapped.

“Oh, Will,” Hannibal sighed, coming back to himself from his rage and despair, “It’s beautiful.”

He came close again and fell to his knees before Will, looking up at the scar as if he would pray to his beloved at the sight of his own mark upon that pale, fragile skin. “Couldn’t I touch it, Will, just once? So that I will always remember, if I live past this day…”

“That’s why, to answer your question,” said Will tightly, taking Hannibal’s hand and pressing it softly to the skin which had been devastated under the killer’s blade. “That’s why it took me so long to come to you directly, it’s why I lurked in your shadows. I knew if we met, we would most likely kill each other, and...I wasn’t ready to let you go. Wasn’t ready to lose you.”

Hannibal stroked Will’s scar, running several fingers rhythmically over the highly sensitive, aching mark, and Will quivered with a low moan. “Mine,” Hannibal sighed, and Will whispered, “Yes.”

“Can’t I touch you, too? So that I’ll always remember?” Will asked, his cheeks damp and shining by firelight. 

“Why would you want to remember?” Hannibal returned huskily.

Will helped him to his feet, then placed Hannibal’s hand on his cheek and over his ear in the same slow massaging caress which the killer had bestowed that fateful night in the kitchen, when Will dripped with rainwater and unspoken need. Now Hannibal had one hand stroking from Will’s cheek to his stubbled jaw and over his ear, and the other caressing the scar on Will’s belly. 

With halting breath, Will rubbed his fingers over Hannibal’s sharp cheekbones, then moved his haunted caress over the killer’s luscious lips, down his strong neck to the top buttons on his plain white shirt. Plain shirt, moss-green sweater, tan trousers. A thrown-together outfit, as if Hannibal had languished in misery prior to Will’s arrival, as if this had been a bad day. To his bittersweet surprise, Will found he could feel sympathy for his evil beloved, even if it twisted in his gut like another knife, or like the terrible thrill of Hannibal’s touch. He could feel sympathy, identification, the desire to make Hannibal happy again...a fierce lust, as well, unraveling him with every touch they shared.

“Your eyes are like dark honey, you consume me,” Will murmured, making Hannibal’s jaw drop slightly. He had waited so long for this affirmation, Will had him held in time, hanging on every syllable. “You’re graceful, magnetic, deadly, selfish and brilliant, you’ve been so harsh with me, but then so kind, so attentive...you rearranged your perfect destiny to make a place for me. No one ever cared for me so deeply. I’ve never glowed for anyone like I do with you.”

Will slid his palm under Hannibal’s shirt and found the gallop of his heartbeat, the warmth of his skin over honed muscle, under softly sexy chest hair. “You set my soul on fire. I’m honored by your regard, your tutelage, and I’m frightened by your passion. I have never wanted anything in my life as much as I want you to make love to me and keep me with you for always. How I love you, Hannibal. Can’t you see? Why couldn’t you see?”

“I’m sorry,” Hannibal whispered as a new tear streaked down his cheek. Will clasped his face now in both hands and kissed the salty drop right as it landed on his lips. 

“ _My Will_ ,” Hannibal sighed into their first full kiss, into the heat and magnetism of perfect velvety wetness, Will’s soft lips parting as his tongue slid inside. 

They wrapped their arms around each other and kissed with passionate abandon, Will moaning at the taste of Hannibal, light with flavors of apple and white wine, otherwise brimming with slick, wonderfully masculine warmth. His fears melted under Hannibal’s fervor, the killer’s powerful hands stroking his body so carefully, skimming his biceps and his back, barely caressing his ass, testing Will’s patience. 

“Please, Hannibal, I’m not that fragile,” he begged, trailing a hot kiss down Hannibal’s neck that made the older man gasp. 

“I know you’re not,” Hannibal said with a shaky smile, “I am, I am, when it comes to you, Will.”

“Show me what you want,” Will pleaded, “I don’t know what to do. I want you, so can you show me--”

“Yes,” Hannibal said, “My darling, yes.”

He was still holding Will with prayerful reverence, still so soft that Will let out a frustrated growl and put both of Hannibal’s hands tightly on his ass. “ _Take me,_ ” Will insisted, then leaned in to Hannibal’s ear to purr, “ _Fuck me,_ Hannibal, I’m _yours,_ so show me what that means. Teach me how to make you wild with pleasure.”

Hannibal snapped to attention at that and placed both hands at Will’s shirt-front, abruptly ripping the black fabric open. He tore the shirt down from Will’s arms and tossed it to the floor, treating Will’s trousers with the same feral impatience. “You will be my undoing, you wicked, beautiful boy,” he snarled, grabbing Will by his ass and devouring his mouth with a bruising kiss.

Will was ignited like a match tossed to a sea of kerosine; his moans grew loud and shameless as Hannibal man-handled him, groping his ass, tossing him against the wall, staring up at him with intense, accusing lust as he hooked his fingers into the waistband of Will’s briefs.

“Everything I am belongs to you,” Hannibal vowed, running his fingertips over the engorged weight of Will’s hard cock. He parted his lips and took Will inside as the younger man threw his head back with a gasp. 

Hannibal’s mouth had been designed to drive Will completely out of his mind; the killer took the whole length of him effortlessly and intently, in and out, sleek heat and exquisite pressure sending pleasure through Will as he shuddered and shoved his hips forward to press deeper, automatically, out of animal instinct. Delighted, Hannibal took Will’s hands and put them on the back of his head, his big brown eyes landing on Will’s reddened face with a clear invitation. 

Was it really like this, could anything be so divinely easy and feel so unbelievably good? Will fucked hard, smooth and deep into Hannibal’s perfect mouth, over and over until on one stroke he pushed far enough that the older man’s lips curved around the base of his cock, his lower lip brushing Will’s balls for a moment of earth-shattering euphoria and a short, thrilled choking noise on Hannibal’s part. As Hannibal drew his mouth back and let a sharp breath out through his nostrils, Will came without any warning, least of all to himself, shuddering harshly, his cum spilling onto Hannibal’s tongue.

“Jesus...Jesus, oh, God,” Will shivered, naked and slouched against the wall, “Please, Hannibal, let me do that to you. I know it won’t be like you can do it, but I need to feel your pleasure, to taste you.”

“Sweet boy.” Hannibal licked his lips, then to Will’s astonishment lifted him, in his somewhat ragdoll like post-orgasmic afterglow, into his arms as if carrying a bride over the threshold of their new home.

“You’re going to break your back,” Will warned, dazed and laughing and still moaning in the after-throes of such intense pleasure, his body soft and submissive in Hannibal’s grip.

“It would be worth it,” Hannibal smirked. He brought Will to his bed, a lavish, enormous one with silky sheets of an ocean blue, like the eyes of his beloved, and once he placed Will down, the impetuous boy sprang up to divest him of his clothes.

“My turn,” Will said with feisty heat, whipping the green sweater over Hannibal’s head and nicely ruffling his wonderful silvery hair, then ripping his shirt open in a suitable revenge for the destruction of his own clothes. It gave him a delighted thrill to see the expensive fabric split easily down the middle, shiny buttons flying all over the place, and a jolt of desperate arousal when he got to Hannibal’s belt buckle and saw how huge, nearly imposing, the bulge was pressing against the older man’s trousers.

“God, Hannibal,” Will sighed, shaking his head, “You’re so gorgeous.” 

Hannibal blushed and played with Will’s curls as the younger man undid his pants and freed his pulsating, beautiful cock. Will’s lack of expertise in these matters became less of a concern to him as the need to have Hannibal in his mouth blotted out his insecurities. 

“Everything I am,” Hannibal repeated, looking dizzy as Will experimented by slowly circling his tongue around the head of his cock, “Is for you.”

Will still wasn’t exactly sure what would be best to do; he moaned with the desire to be already getting on with this so that he could suck Hannibal to distraction, and Hannibal gave him a merciful nod and smile. 

“Shift the foreskin back,” he murmured, his fangs peeking out from pillowy lips, his eyes, dark with primal need, half-closed. “Suck at the tip. Then begin a rhythm of stroking and sucking, taking it slowly at first, but keep your grip firm.”

Will obeyed, marveling at the hot, hard, musky flesh sliding heavily over his tongue, pleasured at his hand growing more confident in stroking. Precum dripped from Hannibal’s rigid dick into Will's mouth and he swirled his tongue, evoking a jagged moan from the older man, whose fingers dug hard into Will’s curls. Intrigued and empowered by the sense of his own effect on Hannibal, Will tried cupping and gently squeezing his balls, thinking about how it felt good when he did this to himself while masturbating (and thinking about Hannibal -- it really was dizzying, feverishly so, the melding of dream and reality). 

“Will,” Hannibal cried out, shaking with pleasure, “Oh,” and then a fast, very dirty-sounding tirade of Lithuanian sentiments that sent tingles of excitement and pride down Will’s spine.

“There, now,” Hannibal shivered after a bit more of this, easing Will off of his cock, “You have me ready for you, my dear. It is time for me to teach you more about how to be ready for me.”

Will watched with sharply attuned anticipation as Hannibal retrieved a bottle of lube from the table by the bed. His eyes were fastened to his lover’s body, his muscles gleaming with sweat, his cock standing to impressive attention, wet with Will’s own saliva, the power and elegance of his legs, the lovely curves of his ass. Every detail left Will quivering, nibbling his lower lip and getting into what he imagined was a convenient position, lying on his back with his legs wide open. He blushed, feeling how completely he was presenting himself for the taking, but then Hannibal’s handsome, loving face was over him, Hannibal’s weight pressed half-against him with the thickness of his cock brushing Will's own. As hard as it was to concentrate on anything but pleasure, Will's thoughts pulled him in all directions, the walls of so many forts falling away, each with a different secret part of his love hidden inside.

“My beloved,” Hannibal murmured, “What are you thinking of?”

“Was it like this with him?” Will asked, afraid all of a sudden, of what he didn’t even know. How could he doubt that he was the love of Hannibal’s life, but how could he forget what else had happened in this very bed? Will was a jealous man, which was a fact he had never known about himself prior to Florence. Now it could easily consume him like wildfire, like lust and adoration for the killer above him.

“Never.” Hannibal kissed Will’s mouth, squeezed lubricant onto his hand and spread it liberally over Will’s hole, then teased him with the tips of his strong fingers, “I closed my eyes and called him ‘Will,’ but it was never good enough. He told me he loved me and I killed him for it, here, I made him choke on and drown in his own blood for the presumption, for thinking _he_ could ever make me happy.”

“You didn’t think I loved you,” Will shivered as Hannibal pressed one finger slowly inside him, his touch firm and guiding, opening Will to this new and vulnerable form of pleasure. “Oh, Hannibal, the way you feel inside me, my God...don’t stop.”

“I never thought we would have this,” Hannibal admitted, stroking deeper in and out, kissing Will’s face, peppering more kisses into his neck until he added a second finger, then bit his throat and sucked the fresh-forming bruise. 

Will’s hips arched against Hannibal, bringing friction to the killer’s cock and a flutter of shocking ecstasy that spread from the touch of Hannibal’s hand, expertly nudging his prostate. 

“Hannibal, Hannibal, please,” would Will ever speak another word? Were there other words that mattered? Only this, what he said next, “I do love you, I always have.”

Hannibal looked at him through a blonde-silver haze of hair falling across his eyes and withdrew his fingers, then made his cock slick with lube, trembling with the pleasure of stroking his aching erection and the wonderment that soon Will would be entirely his own. 

“With Bedelia, did you…” Will looked at him, at a loss for explanation as to his silly envies. 

“No. Every other opportunity for companionship has proved heart-breakingly shallow in your absence. Why didn’t you kill her when you arrived?”

“Maybe I need us to kill her together,” Will smiled, a darkly angelic promise.

Hannibal’s face lit up even more with pride in his beloved’s becoming. “It is only you for me, mylimasis, my adorable, petulant, wild boy, my Will.”

With that, Hannibal lined himself up carefully, looking with concern into Will’s eyes as he slowly entered him. With each gentle, but deliberate shift forward of his thick cock inside Will’s body that seemed almost impossibly tight compared with his girth, Hannibal stroked Will’s face and his body and murmured, “Tell me if it hurts too much, let me make this right for you,” and again and again, “Sweetheart, my darling, I love you, Will.”

“How does it feel?” was all Will asked, gazing at Hannibal in his own suspended state of disbelief.

“You feel more than heavenly,” Hannibal sighed. Slowly but very surely, he drew himself out and back in, building a tempo, every deeper stroke knocking the breath from Will’s lungs and drawing another cry of wrecked bliss. “You make me feel joy and pleasure beyond description. You are so, _so _perfect, Will.”__

__He buried his head in Will’s neck as a wave of intolerably powerful emotion took him over; his lips were hot and insatiable, almost gnawing at the same already worried spot on Will’s neck which he seemed to have decided to use as his next mark on his lover’s body. If not indelible, it would ache for days and show everyone who might see it above Will’s shirt collars that he had been definitively claimed; he belonged to Hannibal now._ _

__Hannibal’s hairy chest rubbed Will’s smooth one, up and down as the younger man wrapped his legs around Hannibal’s hips and began arching his ass into each exquisite thrust. He raked his nails down Hannibal’s back and sobbed his name as the almost nonstop prostate stimulation brought him fast to the edge of paradise, his cock hard again quicker than he knew was possible when he’d only come a little while ago._ _

__Pulling himself from Will’s body with a grunt of temporary regret, Hannibal guided Will over onto his hands and knees, entering him again with such shocking depth that Will moaned, “Fuck me, please, _please,_ Hannibal, that’s so good, I can’t believe--”_ _

__“Neither can I,” Hannibal said, and Will understood then, as his lover clutched his hips and rutted into him aggressively, with shaky near-sobs of pleasure, he’d never had sex like this in his life before either, no matter how much more experienced he was than Will (which would appear to be a great deal). “You’re beautiful, my love. I need you so desperately.”_ _

__He spanked Will, bit his shoulder, reached beneath him to caress the scar again, every minute touch leaving tendrils of warm, rapturous pleasure on Will’s tender skin._ _

__Then Hannibal took Will’s cock in hand and began stroking in time with his thrusts. And Will’s orgasm tore through him like lightning, white hot and so strong that if he had not been so completely surrounded and overtaken by pure, devastating love, he couldn’t have borne it. He cried for their hyper-violent mess, all the pain they’d put each other through with their foolish, destructive mistakes and stubbornness, and he cried for the excruciating tenderness of their union. For the fact that it didn’t have to end between them only with blood, death and failure, but that they could still be happy, wholly themselves, complete in each other, and a horrific peril to anyone who tried to come between them ever again._ _

__“My baby,” Hannibal moaned, soft in a rupture of painfully sweet emotion and physical bliss, and he came into Will with ragged shoves of his hips, a rough smack of skin to skin replete with the scent of their perspiration, desire and the intermingling of their colognes. “My angel,” Hannibal cupped Will’s face like he had in the kitchen, but Will wasn’t afraid anymore, only quaking with the joy of being possessed by his beloved beast. “My everything.”_ _

__“I never expected to hear your voice saying these things to me,” Will shivered and Hannibal wrapped him in a tight embrace, so tight that anyone else probably would have found it smothering and even threatening. Will knew it was what they both needed, so he bravely took the heated pressure of Hannibal’s muscular arms clasping him obsessively._ _

__“I can’t have you close enough,” Hannibal moaned, kissing his ear, finding the smiling scar again and massaging the puckered skin, “I have to have you forever.”_ _

__Will grabbed Hannibal’s forearm where it crossed his torso like barbed wire and crushed him even tighter around him with a sweet groan of pained pleasure. He dug his nails into the scars on Hannibal’s wrists from Matthew Brown’s attack and grinned wolfishly when finally blood spurted, slightly, and Hannibal understood. “Just try to get away from me,” Will muttered, coating his fingertips in Hannibal’s blood and then licking it, kissing his lover over his shoulder, “For that matter, I think you’d better marry me.”_ _

__“I’ve never heard a proposal that sounded so much like a threat,” Hannibal chortled, although the throaty timbre in his voice and the way he still hoarsely whined, enraptured by how Will had reopened his old wound, made it clear he was enthralled by Will’s continued blossoming._ _

__“There’s my brilliant Dr. Lecter,” Will smirked, his eyes cloudy with lazy but persistent lust. “I want to be the best you ever had, I want to kill anyone who’s touched you, I want all your time and attention and for you to teach me everything you know. It’s a good thing you’d never leave me, because if you did, I’d kill you.”_ _

__“There’s my ingenious, dangerous, irresistible Will,” Hannibal smiled, cuddling more contentedly and calmly because Will’s words had soothed his soul like the smoothest salve. “How you delight me, in every surprise within the unfurling of your butterfly wings.”_ _

__Will rolled onto his back with an adoring laugh at how hard it was to get Hannibal to move from his stubbornly clingy position._ _

__“Come here, love,” he beckoned, cradling Hannibal’s head against his chest, draping his arms over Hannibal as they both felt it like the embrace of demon wings spread black and jeweled, protective and glistening. Their vision had come to fruition at last, but they were just getting started._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fic title taken from the Little Mix song, which is a really cute song, yet somehow made the idea for this story appear in my mind fully formed. Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed! 🖤


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